On Wednesday, Texas Monthly senior writer Michael Hardy uncorked a scalding hot take that Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) support for the basic premise of only women and girls being allowed to compete in sports for women and girls puts him on the same plane as Nazi Germany, which went as far as putting gay and transgender individuals in concentration camps alongside Jews and the disabled during the Holocaust.

How did Hardy arrive at this dangerous conclusion? Hardy painted a picture of a Cruz campaign – which is locked in a reelection fight against liberal Congressman Colin Allred (D-TX) – as somehow no longer focused on the economy and the border and instead directing its closing argument on “transgender rights.”

This, after litigating the issue from a leftist perspective with sympathy for transgenderism (and a warped tale about a biological woman prevented from competing against men), resulted in the wild Nazi claim that Cruz and the state GOP “have joined a long tradition of antitrans fearmongering.”

Eye-roll-worthy, but not unheard of, which had the headline, “Can Transphobia Save Ted Cruz’s Political Career? Amid a tight reelection campaign, the junior senator is spending millions on antitrans advertisements.”

But this, dear readers, was bonkers and yet, so casual on Hardy’s part:

In 1933, Nazi vigilantes ransacked and looted the Berlin library of Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneering German scholar of sexuality who coined the term “Transvestit” (“transvestite”). Hitler denounced Hirschfield as the “the most dangerous Jew in Germany.” Even as gay and lesbian Americans have gained increasing acceptance in recent decades, transgender and nonbinary citizens have remained at the margins of society, subject to legal discrimination and personal violence.

So, Ted Cruz is a Nazi but also the Zodiac Killer and his father may have had something to do with the JFK assassination? It’s hard to keep track of the conspiracy theories!

But in all seriousness, Hardy’s shamelessness dragged on in the two subsequent paragraphs as Hardy framed genuine concern about the role of irreparable life decisions young children are pushed into and make as not occurring. He also lazily brought up the transgender idol worshippers’ claim that opposing them means transgender individuals will die by suicide (click “expand”):

Medical experts say there’s a legitimate debate to be had over the efficacy of gender-affirming care and whether it’s being prescribed appropriately. But that’s not the debate that statewide leaders in Texas are promoting. Over the past few years, Texas has ramped up its legal assault on transgender children and their families. In 2021, members of the Texas Legislature proposed more than forty bills targeting transgender and nonbinary youth—more than were introduced in any other state. The following year, Attorney General Ken Paxton declared that some forms of gender-affirming care constituted criminal child abuse. Governor Greg Abbott followed up by directing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents of transgender children. In 2023 the Texas Legislature banned the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for kids considering or undergoing transitions. Many families with transgender children have subsequently fled the state. 

Many academics, pollsters, and campaign operatives seem to view bashing trans children as clever politics. Abbott political strategist Dave Carney, for one, famously called antitrans policies a “seventy-five, eighty percent winner” in Texas politics. For those who are transgender, though, those policies can be a matter of life and death. A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide-prevention group, found that one in five transgender and nonbinary children in Texas had tried to end their lives in the past year; more than half had seriously considered making that choice.

Those graphs were followed by gripes from the founder of a group called Parents of Trans Youth who incredibly has not one but “two transgender adult children.”

In his interview on The Joe Rogan Experience published yesterday, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance dove into this hyper-obsessed world in which transgenderism seems encouraged to achieve peak status on the protected class spectrum.

The prior hullaballoo argued Cruz’s focus has turned away from the border, “incompetent utility regulators,” “rising home and rental costs,” and “rural hospital closures” toward transgenderism as “are part of a nationwide push by Republican candidates, who have spent more than $65 million on antitrans ads since August.”

He of course found a Texas lobbyist to agree with him, but fretted this issue would be a winning one for Cruz, who has focused on Allred’s opposition to the aptly named Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.

Hardy whined the issue appeals to voters in casting those opposed to full protections for girls as extreme (click “expand”):

At first glance, the senator’s going all in on transphobia for his closing argument might seem puzzling, given that he’s spent most of his campaign stressing immigration and jobs. A recent poll conducted by the University of Texas at Austin asked voters to name their top political issue. A plurality (18 percent) chose the economy, which was followed by immigration, inflation, democracy, and abortion. Pollster Jim Henson told me that hardly anyone cited transgender issues as their foremost concern. A national Gallup poll taken in September asked voters to evaluate the importance of 22 campaign issues. “Transgender rights” came in dead last.  

So why the last-minute pivot to transgender issues? “It’s an easy way for a Republican to paint their opponent as an extremist,” Henson said. “Even if it’s not a particularly salient issue, it’s very effective in signaling to moderates that your opponent is out of the mainstream.” Last year, a UT-Austin poll found that 63 percent of Texans—including 33 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and 89 percent of Republicans—agreed that the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate should be the only way to define gender, with just 25 percent disagreeing. (Twelve percent of respondents said they weren’t sure.)

(….)

His campaign seems to believe that focusing on high school sports is a way to harness antitrans sentiment without alienating the moderate voters he needs to win. “Texas is sports-centric,” Miller told me. “Everyone here has kids, and most of those kids participate in some kind of athletics. Frankly, I wouldn’t want my two daughters to compete against guys. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Hardy continued that this “gambit might be working” since Allred released an ad disingenuously claiming “he doesn’t ‘want boys playing girls’ sports” and in turn has “infuriated some liberal activists, who saw Allred capitulating to Cruz’s antitrans rhetoric.”